Mayor: Catch ‘culprits’ who hoist Confederate-themed flag

MAGNOLIA, Miss. (AP) — The mayor of a majority-black Mississippi town says he wants to know who keeps hoisting the state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem.

Officials in Magnolia removed the Mississippi flag from public display in July 2015, weeks after a white gunman killed black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Critics say the flag represents slavery, segregation and white supremacy.

Magnolia Mayor Anthony Witherspoon tells the Enterprise-Journal that someone has raised the state flag on a pole in the town park three times recently, and he’s had enough.

Witherspoon says he intends to put up a surveillance camera and “the culprits will be prosecuted.”